This post has been replaced in February 2017. Note that content subsequently following is outdated.

Developer

Wolfwith lots of support from Bugsy and the community

Genre

First Person Shooter // Adventure // Cyberpunk, Gothic, SciFi

Version

4.x69x

Plot

Acythian is a cyberpunk/noir themed first person shooter game.

Plot summary:
A retired special forces agent infiltrates the headquarters of
a religious cult to rescue his prodigal foster daughter.
Hereby being unwillingly dragged into a widespread conspiracy.

As a linear, narrative driven game, Acythian builds on lore and
atmosphere to draw haunting science fiction environments and
believable, fleshed out characters that inhabit this world.
The game is set in a distant future where humanity has been
starkly decimated by drawn out wars and nature is regaining
a lot of territory.

The core plot line is relatively simple and the game has a strong
focus on a fully realized world surrounding it. While you'll be
infiltrating the citadel, the headquarters of an influential
religious cult, you will also get a good impression of the lore
and world surrounding this place.

Acythian is a first person shooter at its core while also
implementing adventure game mechanics. There'll be looting
but we try to stay true to its FPS roots and do our best to
avoid cluttered inventories and micromanaging resources.
There will still be plenty of items and gameplay elements
to use and combine in realtime.

For example: You can boost your character using various implants
which will however also add to your neurotoxicty level. This can be fatal
if it reaches a high amount and impair your skills if not deadly.

Weapons in this game will be balanced according to their real world
counterparts and should feel as authentic as I can manage them to be.

The game will not feature any unnecessary gimmick, will not be a clone of
or be "heavily inspired"of an existing game.

With this said I invite you to follow the development process of a
futuristic, gothic adventure set in a hauntingly beautiful world
drenched in rust,tares and blood.

What drives you, stranger?
And don't give me some trite answer I might find on a calendar or on the label of some ayurvedic teabag. A little respect would be in order, you are talking to a moribund man.
Do you ever take a moment during your pointless daily races to wonder why you even bother?
I did!
Countless times.
Whenever I stood, dressed in full combat gear, under the shower trying to wash off the blood, never feeling quite clean.
Whenever everyone I was getting to know died around me just to ward off yet another wave in an endless sequence of enemy waves or to hold a few pointless compounds in an utterly pointless war.
You may find my words to be ...trivial. The musings of yet another drunk ...or perhaps you can relate. This world is so far gone that there is a good chance that you are not so different from me.
I pulled through and what drove me after the war was simple. To give back. To save a couple of lives for a change,... rather than extinguishing them.
It might surprise you which was far harder to achieve.
I've founded the Lazareth in this part of town and as soon as the Neurophage took Acythia we where swamped with patients. We did our best to prevent the unavoidable. At least we managed to prolong the lives of a couple dozen souls. The successes tasted stale in the face of the mass extinction the phage caused.
And for all the bravado and the medals I received for killing in the war, the pharmaceutical companies scolded and ridiculed me for my attempts to treat subculture scum. They didn't use these exact words but it was the sentiment.
They insisted that people rather supported their charities than our unsanitary lazareth, spreaded lies about my organisation, ordered hits on 2 of my nurses....I can't link anything substantial back to them, of course, but come on! We are all adults here.
I grew pretty cynical. More so than I was before if you can believe that.
But then...they brought in this girl. Must've been 16 when they carried her in. Prostitute overdosed on pink dust, no blight spores in her as far as we could tell. I fell in love. Don't give me that look...not in a sexual way, ...you degenerate.
You see, in the eugenics war I led a special forces group. We where highly augmented. They took us and turned us into weapons. I must have been in my mid 20's then.
There it is, that look again.
You don't believe a single word I'm saying, do you? The reconstructive nanites in my bloodstream prevented my remaining tissue from aging. I'm 85 years old, son.
I'm more machine than I am human. They didn't take my humanity, the war took care of that, they took my ability to ...reproduce and seeing this fragile body on the gurney reminded me of something. Something ancient, older than all this cybernetic heresy around us. I felt the need to protect her. I wanted to be her ...father.
If that doesn't sound too crazy for you. Tracking down her pimp and human trafficking network was easier than I expected. I had to call in a few favours but...nonetheless...took me only a couple of weeks. You see, I once swore to never kill a human being again but these people...they've chosen not to be human. Killed 'em all. Not even felt anything but relief. Kept an eye on law enforcement communication. They noted where they found the bodies but didn't even bother with an investigation. What kind of cop would cuff me for taking out a pedophile ring? None rotten enough, not even in these troubled time.
We almost lost her, I paid for a new liver myself as well as a pair of cybernetic legs. Necrosis took them, too much dust can do this to you, you know.
You are still here? Admirable! So few people seem to have the ...attention span to take all of this in nowadays. At least so it seems. May I buy you a drink?
Anyway, the years it took me to educate and raise her where the best times I've had. Of course I've also taught her how to protect herself. We almost managed to forget about all the decay around us at times. But she became a young woman and although the scars of her past have healed, at least so it felt, she became increasingly altruistic. And I don't mean in a healthy way. She felt like my work in the lazareth, was a waste of time. Only a droplet on a hot stone as she'd say and that the cancerous systems that took hold after the war had to go. She eventually joined this resistance movement. You've heard of it, even though you'll probably won't admit it.
One of their fences got wind that this new holier-than-thou religious cult, the Kyanic Order, has an experimental cure for the Neurophage stashed away. Apparently they wanted to wait for the city to be on the brink of extinction. And when there was nothing left but desperation they'd swoop in like big divine saviours, assuring the legitimation of their cult and thus ultimately gain sovereign power over the city. My little girl was the prodigy of the rebel network and they've sent her in to steal the antidote. It went about as well as you could expect.
She got caught and they sentenced her to death. I was present during that hearing. The order voted against the courts ruling, claiming they'd want to spare her soul and wanted to cleanse her on their sacred grounds.The citadel is what they called it, an enormous compound on an island a couple kilometers south of Acythia. Since she stole from the cult and would be out of the city this way the court agreed to them taking her to their property. They claim it to be a retreat for their higher ranking members, their little “Vatican” so to speak but... the myths and legends surrounding that facility are probably more numerous than those surrounding that cult itself. I don't know what they plan to do to her there but I do know that she's likely not intended to survive the process. What choice do I have? I know there is nothing but a fools hope, but as long as there is any hope to get her out of there alive, I'll have to try.
Tomorrow I'll call in my last favours, dust off my old gear and get myself killed. Ha!
The sea leading to their damned island are littered with cliffs and rock formations. Remnants of the heavy artillery fire that shaped this coast back during the war. If I keep my most of my non-essential augs in standby and take a small boat...or raft... keep the sun in my back and approach through these formations they'd only pick up my signal if they'd actively look for me. Here's to hoping that they won't!
Its a chance... however slim. And there you have it....that is what drives me. My daughter. The last remaining flower for me in this vineyard of rust and corrosion.
I'll get her out of there..., any means necessary … and if I die trying at least I make sure I've given their false prophets. with their grandiose messianic delusions something to mourn and preach about. ...by the break of dawn!

TL;DR

A retired special forces agent infiltrates the headquarters of a religious cult to rescue his prodigal foster daughter. Hereby being unwillingly dragged into a widespread conspiracy.

Confused?

If you where following this project for a while you might be confused by this shift in plot and style, this code snippet explains the numerous concepts and versions this game went through.

0.5 x11x
In the first iteration of this game it was a pretty pure science fiction shooter. You where supposed to be a grunt that crash landed behind enemy lines.
I've penned this concept being very disappointed into GG and having very few media ready to use. This was during a time where the engine was in a very early stage. I late abandoned this direction as it was too crude to persue.
1.0 x0x
A story driven third person shooter. Here you where to take control of a young gunslingin and sword wielding ninja lady.
Blending decidedly dated and cheesy aesthetics with an oppressive cyberpunk look this game was supposed to be far more arcade'ish.
However, the whole plotline and concept I outlined for it was way over my head and too much for GG to deliver, especially at the time.
2.0 X01X
Getting back to my roots I've took a lot of elements from my former project "PSISHOCK" and intended to play it safe. Making this a scifi horror game entirely set in an underground military compound. Very boring!
3.0 Bulletblues
An entirely different game that was supposed to be simple and out for christmas. Later, after increasing difficulties, morphed into the test game "Redacted: Hired Gun" that got released.
3.5 xT32Tx
Redacted: Hired Gun, the test game to really probe GG's meddle and see what I can, personally, achieve in the engine after developing in so many different directions. This game can be found in the showcase board and it also let to the final concept of the acythian project.
4.x69x
Final iteration of Acythian. Entirely penned out.

Due to the everchanging nation of earlier iterations of this game you might see content that will be very different or not in the final game at all. This is a work in progress thread after all. Style might also be subject to change but I'm quite happy with late results.

Screenshots

Features

* Greater Attention to detail and style
* An emotionally compelling storyline
* A deep lore
* Complex environments and architecture that is interconnected and makes sense
* Interactive and animated environments
* Destroyable items
* Using all of GG's FPS mechanics to my best knowledge
* atmospheric soundtrack
* Branching level three for varying gameplay experiences (parts of the game will branch out into 2 different levels and later link back together)
* Voiceacting

About time fella. Glad you battling on. I am from Yorkshire England and very tight with money so I am here for the next decade. I am sure all will be well. And the confusion that is will be dealt with. Nice screen shots by the way. I will be watching this tgread definitely

Glad you're sticking around - I'll follow this project with interest. As a single hobbyist, I realised a while ago that the chances of someone like me creating anything remotely worthwhile in UDK, Cryengine etc was pretty much zero, so Reloaded/GameGuru it is (I'm following Skyline with interest, too - I think it has serious potential).
Those screenshots are great.

The light and shadow settings are saved in the visuals.ini in the main folder. You can insert your values there, not sure if it works 100%

I agree with you, I will continue with GG too, even it will take more time until it has all the features I want and need... But I've worked with other engines before (2D side scroller in Udk) + some other 2D engines, it was always more complicated or a pain in the a.... GG is nice and easy to use

What I can do with GG in 30 minutes would take much more time with another engine (UE4) and I don't have that much time after work, as I'm not a student anymore

This post will mostly deal with feedback. I don't have that much progress to show yet it also feels rude not to comment before going on vacation. I have a 6 hour drive to master tomorrow.

To the community

@science boy: Thanks for the interest and for the support. Making a game is only fun when you know that people are going to play it
I'll be battling on, albeit even more laid back than before I'm also working on a dungeon pack you might find even more interesting.

@section 812: Thank you!! I love making it

@Gtox:

Quote: "Glad you're sticking around - I'll follow this project with interest. As a single hobbyist, I realised a while ago that the chances of someone like me creating anything remotely worthwhile in UDK, Cryengine etc was pretty much zero,"

Same here. My FPSC games had thousands of players...if I where to make a game in UDK I'd be lucky if a dozen people would play it Altough you are making worthwhile content, gtox! I enjoy your fishes and the raptor

Quote: "(I'm following Skyline with interest, too - I think it has serious potential). "

Me too...I also think the dev is simply sympathetic and I generally gravitate towards smaller engines.

@Mookai: Good to know! I will give that a try when I get back.
I understand the notion. I also rather work one or 2 hours on a rainy evening and have something nicely designed to show for it than fiddle around in an engine for an entire weekend. GG is just great for that and I think, with a little bit of dedication, the results can be powerful. Rolfy has shown this before.

@unfamillia:

Quote: "Uncle Wolf! "

Quote: "Great to see more work from you here!

I love the moon and the little puddles of water that your purifiers are sat in! Really sets an eerie mood.

I like the weapon. Like a space age shotgun. "

Mood is what I aim to use to have the player forgive the less developed gunplay. I hope it'll work
And yes, that is indeed a space-age shotgun. I will be rigged to the standart shotgun arms and shoot explosive plasmashells. Well observed!

Quote: "Oh, you can use the rifle I sent to you. I don't mind. Do what you wish with that mate. "

Thanks a lot! The stock arms don't have a fitting animation set for it though

Quote: "I am looking forward to trying this one! I will be at the front of the queue waving money at you, upon release."

Thanks!! I'm looking forward to find out how well this might sell.

Quote: "It looks intersting. Cross my finger that I can play this time the game"

If gameguru does not have the build-game hickups FPSC had... then you will! Its not an impossibly ambitious game like shavra so I should finish it.

To the developers

Your asset importer is nice! It really is and has most functions I'd like. It would however be cool if I could, alongside the autoimport, select the shadertextures aswell.

Progress

Retexture of stock character to fit the futuristic setting. I aim to have him as a default soldier and a shocktrooper with adaptive camouflage inspired by ghost recon : future soldier. That effect was easily doable in FPSC so I doubt there will be much hazzle in guru. I should be able to have him "sneek up" on the player by adapting the script to what distance he will shoot. We'll see.
Glowy parts make little sense on combat gear but it looked good in F.E.A.R 2 and Sam fisher has been getting away with it since 2002.
Note the wire-shirt underneath his combat gear that should feed the ad-camo, implied HUD in the glasses and a hint to a breathing aparatus beneath the balaclava-mask.

Advice for fellow developers

FPSCreator and FPSCreator X10 are goldmines for assets. Purchase them be it only for the models. It'd be a bargain and the stuff looks really good when some shaders and a more modern ligthing system is applied to it.

I'm also working on a dungeon pack you might find even more interesting.

i am very verey very very very very very very very interested in your dungeon pack, it is going to inspire i can feel it already, your old dungeons used to inspire me immensely especially how you mixed wood and brick etc, you were natural and secretly behind the scenes made me want to do it and hence what you see of mine was brought about by you

@Ertlov: Thank you! Altough as far as guru is concerned, you made far better stuff than I have so far.

@science boy:

Quote: "I'm also working on a dungeon pack you might find even more interesting. "

I do! You still don't have any plans on selling on the store, by the way?

Quote: "i am very verey very very very very very very very interested in your dungeon pack, it is going to inspire i can feel it already, your old dungeons used to inspire me immensely especially how you mixed wood and brick etc, you were natural and secretly behind the scenes made me want to do it and hence what you see of mine was brought about by you "

Wow! Thank you! I had no idea these had that kind of a productive effect That flatters me a lot because your dungeons are the finest on here so far and that includes my carefully unwrapped prototypes for the old Shavra.

@vrg: Thx! Please remember that the videoclip I linked to is FPSCreator and not GameGuru Its not directly related to this project.

To the developers

An autoconversion tool that converts textures and generates missing shader maps would be fantastic, but I'd also be happy if the built in entitie importer wouldn't shut down after each import

So! Whats new? Well!! Nothing...what follows will likely be incredibly dull and uninteresting to you...in fact, the content of this post will most likely be completely removed after I made the transition to the newer, better concept for acythian. The truth is: making a dull, low quality shooter isn't fun and there are already thousands to chose from. So onward!!

....To prototyping land

Here are some leftovers from the original design and color pallette.

This is an android working on a deceased soldier...and there is also a pile of bones on the floor. None of that matters though because this scene is not in the final game

You might wonder why I show screenshots of an already discontinued design...the reason is simple: For this project to be entertaining for me I decided to double the quality of my old FPSC work and make it a really cerebreal game. This means that there won't be an update for a while and I don't want to leave you people hangin and have the thread die down.
It took a while until a story and idea hit me that I could tell mostly through environment and notes with only occasional characters that isn't pretentious scrap like most first person adventures...but when it did hit me, it hit hard and I'm very motivated to make it my game project of the year.

Acythian is now a first person adventure...like all those projects FPSC didn't let me do. (Speaking of FPSC projects...I dug out the first one I EVER released on the TGC boards...it will be on the youtubes soon!) I have faith that guru will eventually let me make my little short stories and that would make and old Wolf happy.

The tagline of the project is "the divine law" so you can guess that its going to be heavy handed...however, its also going to be creapy...a lot more than my previous horror games and there will be the usual hidden humour.

You will now look at a nonsense prototype map I was clicking around in when I was forging the new game idea in my head.

I'm also modernizing and importing the FPSC classic stock assets for this game. They aged phenomenaly and require very little renovation.

Advice for fellow developers

Game Guru not ready for your project yet? Work on your assets and concept...make sure that everything is ready to go once those big updates hit!

Thanks for reading.

-Wolf

"When I contradict myself, I am telling the truth"
"absurdity has become necessity"
79% Sale on my latest Scifi Modelpack. Get it here!

well let me be the first to comment i like the above stuff very much and i am sure you will out do yourself again, i am very much admiring your structure work lovely textures by the way, i am wondering why you are not using the old stuff it looks awesome to me

Thank you! Many scifi games look alike which is why I try to have mine stand out. By stand out I simply mean that you can look at a screenshot and directly say "thats Wolfs game". There are so many post Mass Effect small-studio games that aped that look. The same happened with UT and Halo. Rusty and worn scifi is alos simply my cup of tea

To the developers

Having a feature that lists every entitie used in a map, and the location it is in would be very practical for gradually improving textures
Granted, this will likely not be used too much but I'd certainly like it

The return .......To prototyping land

I wasn't working as much on this the last couple of days but what I was trying to do was increasing the resolution and rewrapping the stock entities. Especially the architectural ones. I also made sure they fit in my colorpallette and that the normalmaps are decent. I found that guru handles quite a few highres textures! I want this game to look very vivid and decided to go with a fully shaded, high resolution look. Wether I can maintain that for all props is yet to be seen. This is the exact opposite of Spyra's prototype where I was working with very low-res textures to fit everything in FPSC's memorycap.

These are from wizard of ids stock media, slightly updated for acythians look.

Another thing I was attempting was architectural design without the conkit. This might help to enhance my experience with the conkit later.
The result was simply that while I can model the levels architecture entirely or partially in outside software, I just don't reach a sufficient level of accuracy and so far it really is a pain to do anything indoorsy with guru.

Here are some failed attempts that the lightmapper screwed up even more (I'm having all the issues rolfy has already noted):

Something that worked pretty well is the player body! Big shoutout to DVader for the basic script that I use for now (uncertain wether there will follow a built in function for this). I'll just have to add straving, crouching and jumping and its alright for alpha testing. This is of course a feature that goes into polish much later. The model has been a gift from the great gunsmith EAI and it has a ton of animations that might just do some serious first-person magic with the right use of LUA...I hope to achieve some cool environment interaction. ...hope!
s4's FPSC version of this had a feature to remove the limbs whenever the player equipped a weapon. This worked pretty seamlessly and I'm hoping to achieve something similar in guru. I'll also replace her hands with ones resembling the HUD handrig once I know what that rig looks like
The player-shadow is a nice plus! when I had this feature in FPSC, it was a planary projected one, now its a dynamic one.

This should remind some older gamers of the terrific survival shooter "Trespasser"

Advice to fellow developers

Try all the engines you can! You'll get more techsavvy and learn to appreciate Game-gurus simplicity!

No big advice this time, but also no all too big update

-Wolf

"When I contradict myself, I am telling the truth"
"absurdity has become necessity"
79% Sale on my latest Scifi Modelpack. Get it here!

Quote: "well that looks like moria mines of the underworld, infact smaug would love it there"

I think I can't afford his voice and mocap actor.

Quote: "and i just expect the balrog to come thumping through them huge walls knocking pillars over"

Hey! I'm open for huge creatures! After all this should be a smart blend of penumbra and quake ... I also just realize how "I'm open for large creatures" sounds when you say it out aloud.

Quote: "Wolf, I see smexiness all over this thread! Excellent work as usual good sir!"

Thank you!! I checked your signatur by the way...I had no idea you where this good at web-design. What happened to Robo-legs?

Quote: "Wolf, I can tell that this is going to be incredible and I hope that if you want anything from me in the form of help encouragement or 3d models/animations you won't hesitate to hit me up on skype"

I was thinking about you when I started this game... I'd need a little help from you...all you had to do was animate a sequence. I provide models, sounds and environment...the whole shabam! You'd just have to assemble the scene and make a short (less than 1 minute) video We can talk about this in skype next time we catch each other online.

-Wolf

"When I contradict myself, I am telling the truth"
"absurdity has become necessity"
79% Sale on my latest Scifi Modelpack. Get it here!

Lets apply some necromancy to this thread and have it rise... riiise from its grave.
You haven't seen any'n all too hot things from me in 2015 mainly because it was a very turbulent year for me and I've been way too lazy in the creative department. I want to change that in 2016 by releasing this game. Why not Shavra? Well... its supposed to be the last game I ever make and lets face it: Its not like I'm going to stop anytime in the near future. Gamedesign is a weird thing to be addicted to but its an addiction none the less

This whole update should have been here before 2016 and polished but lots of things got in the way. I don't like to present halfbaked content but hey! We are all developers here and you all now that none of this is in a final stage. This isn't a promotional thread either but a work in progress.
I really wanted this to be out before Lee is releasing any major update so people know that I have been suffering the roughness of Game Guru just as much as my fellow dev!

Little miss Murder here is the heroine of Acythian. I'm not sure yet wether I'll make this a third or first person game. The character, which Errant AI generously provided, has a large set of animations so third person wouldn't look bad at all. Plus I could use my own weapon designs. The downside is that it is less immersive and with VR sets coming up having it in first person with a good player-body would be great. I'll experiment around and let you know once my decision is final. The weapon she is holding is a placeholder and will not be in the game. Her look will be slightly altered as well. Depending on how guru develops I might rig some more equipment to her but only if we'll get an inventory system and if I can swap out character meshes "on the fly".
Everything else you see on here is still pretty early in development, except for the car meshes which will likely not get any more polish. (cars are outdated in the lore of Acythian an litter the streets of poor districts.

Whats this going to be anyway?

Bugsy recently developed this gem of a cyberpunk game. He was almost unable to release it because the built FPSC game gave him a plethora of crashes and errors. He pushed through though... luckily. I did so too with earlier titles but my later titles just didn't work in FPSC. They'd eventually crumble under their own weight (runtime error...subscript out of bounds...random crash. Something along these lines would ensue). This is an effort to resurrect some of the content and ideas from these dead titles.

This for example! - I would have loved to finish it but it just overloaded FPSC's Memcap. No matter what. (and many more problems aswell.) Same with Black November. Half a dozen levels done and all I have to show for it is a video of the first level.

I believe that my sci fi games have a distinct tone and style to them and I'd really like to finally get that tone and style on some players hard drives.
Acythian will be a story driven cyberpunk action game filled with atmosphere. It will redefine and recombine old ideas and have them all in a neat and hopefully entertaining 15 level package. This is what I try to do. This is my game project for this year.

There is little design work that is actually at a stage where it can be presented. What I show you here is mighty unpolished but you'll get an idea where some of it is going. Almost all of it is in real time lighting. the baking system does not seem to like scaled or rotated meshes...and some meshes just for their attitude I guess .

Note: The game start with our heroine being washed up ashore on a littered beach. With a towering skyline in the background...this should send the tone. With the current water shader and all... you can only see that there are plenty of carwrecks underwater from a distance. SCREENSHOT

I have yet to convert most of my trash and litter models to get the beach done. this is busywork though. Many of these models date back to ancient projects of mine

I think that add there looks misplaced and will be swapped with something else soon. I added the lensflare in post as I had to edit the image because the Mega Pack Version of my Cyberpunk-pack billboard doesn't have the _I map set.. so I got carried away. Don't judge me!

I tried to craft a somewhat authentic rocky coast. The result is okay ... so far.

So! There are plenty more things I wanted to write about, but they slipped my mind So please! If you have questions, air your thoughts here. I'd be happy to answer.

Advice for fellow developers

MakeHuman is a free open.source tool to make 3d characters. There is a low poly proxy among the export options and its great as a base for your own creations.

-Wolf

"When I contradict myself, I am telling the truth"
"absurdity has become necessity"

Thanks for all the feedback! I wasn't expecting that many comments in so little time and am happy to have received them

@Myke:

Quote: "Nice explanations of the processes and woe's of game development."

Oh yes! But what would it be without the woes

@Bolt Action Gaming:

Quote: " I have to say your use of models and level design are very clean and precise; they are matched exceptionally well."

Thank you! That means a lot to me as I have always tried to achieve just that. When I started in 3D there where no shader effects and no all too impressive lighting so a non-matching texture would really stick out. Years later I am again working in a tool without impressive lighting

Quote: "I like the use of graffiti; are you doing that with decals or direct to a texture?"

Its direct to texture. Its just allowing for better and more precise results. decals also invite to reuse them and players would notice repeating graffiti tags.
Decals are also very impractical for curved models such as this. LINK

Quote: "You could probably clean it up a bit with extra pieces but really at this point try not to get hung up on detailing a background element like that."

Thats a good point, it needs a few extra rocks to look more vivid. I will however add scene detail like this on the second polishing pass way later in development. That level there will get its indoor architecture and the trash and clutter for the beach next

@Gtox:

Quote: "love your style!"

Thank you! I try to make this a very stylized game. The colors will be tweaked later and I hope to add 1 or 2 levels with atmospheric rain.

@Science Boy

Quote: "splendid also to see the master return, with gusto i hope. brilliant stuff"

Still not keeping up with your development on twin worlds, mate! But thanks, and yes, with a lot of gusto. Its fun to have this come to live more and more.

Thank you all for your kind words

-Wolf

"When I contradict myself, I am telling the truth"
"absurdity has become necessity"

Some awesome wip that are inspirational. I love thought and design. Individualism and different ideas. I love fantasy but I play shadow run. Love cthulu. Have elite. Addicted to star wars battlefront. Although at the moment have a lot on but each night I get chance to see creativity flowing this is truly the beginning of something great.

Quote: "his is great Mr Wolf, you have you're own style pretty much nail down"

Quote: "most impressing, very individual style. envy"

Quote: "Some awesome wip that are inspirational. I love thought and design. Individualism and different ideas."

Thank you!! I don't try to overstylize it or try to make it different from other scifi titles for the sake of it. However, It should have its own tone and voice as well as being recognizable at first glance. There are plenty of midware or lower budget games that look alike.

Quote: "and know completely what you want to achieve. "

Errm! YES! Absolutely... But to be honest I don't. There are too many unclear variables at the moment. There is a large list of things that this game ought to have but even more elements that are not yet decided.

Quote: " Try to stick it out until completion, though we all know how difficult that is"

Ha! Yes. While there are certainly titles that I just dropped myself, there are even more I HAD to drop because FPSC would not let me finish them (or let me finish them but then decide to only load the first level as a big errected middlefinger to me for even trying). I'd just be glad if Guru'd be different.

Quote: "this is truly the beginning of something great. "

I very much hope so!! twin worlds is coming along great as well!

Progress

...is being slow. I'm convinced that in 2 or 3 months (provided I have the time) I'll plow ahead much faster. Right now I am still updating, redesigning and importing my media (from a collection I have amassed in 9 years of GD) including modeling new stuff.

I was however trying out how well dynamic objects behave in Guru and I am more than pleasantly surprised. I might easily have very dynamic and destructible environments in Acythian's action sequences. That the levels will be interactive is a given. I even tried to provide a lot of interactions in an engine as static as FPSC's.

I managed to import all my trash... I mean trash and rubble models for the polluted beach level. Its spiffing now but I won't show progress of that map again, maybe later, maybe never. Otherwise it won't be interesting to explore in the final release. But then again, this IS a developers forum not steam-greenlight. We'll see!

This however:

Shows minor progress.

Its not at all the level I would liked to get on the forums in January but its something!! I made a new years resolution: At least 2 updates per month!

The reason why there is so little new to show is because I don't want to keep showing you levels you already saw and because getting my media up and running takes way longer than I ever expected. I'm also experimenting a lot with gameplay and what can realistically be done. Being able to shoot things apart and see them breaking down is already pretty neat!! Lets take it further.

I hope I can show you the test map where I'll prototype the shooting and (I dearly hope so) stealth elements of the game in february. I will however be out of the country for a while.

What you see above is a mere scene showing some media. Again...just a sign of life!! Its not baked and has tagged on light effects... but I won't rant about the lightmapping again. ..I hold myself back!

-Wolf

Edit: Almost forgot the hint for fellow developers:

Clutter items are useful and often needed. However, having a large set of decorative items with multiple 512² textures can drain your performance. Instead of lowering the resolution or so, try to have many items source from the same texture! You'd be surprised what you can fit on a 1024² or 2048² texture without sacrificing visual fidelity. Compress that texture for even better optimisation. (That compression artifact you might get on the handle of the screwdriver will just not be noticed in a running game)

"When I contradict myself, I am telling the truth"
"absurdity has become necessity"

Thanks!! I try not to be like those devs that shine at first presentation but then get progressively worse 'till release. (E3 demos )

@m2design

Quote: "The models you create are really impressive and imaginative. Would it be inappropriate to ask what modeling software you use?
I am fascinated with your results."

Thank you! And of course its not inappropriate, altough the answer is likely disappointing: I model with milkshape 3d. Its more than a decade old and hopelessly outdated... but I love it! Can I recommend it? Yes and no. Most software is ten times more advanced and userfriendly by now.
To be honest: What you have on your store page and in cogitate is just as good as what I do.

Quote: "the last shot takes me to shadowrun starwars but better"

Thank you!
I'll do an ATAT type bot soon! You'll probably like it.

As far as development goes: I'm having trouble with the 3rd person view system (I'm 80% sure this will be TPV) right now. The char refuses to play its animations when attached to the camera while flawlessly playing them when not

Other than that I am working on 2 maps that will be in the final game. Both maps will be progressively developed where I will implement the core gameplay. It goes like this: there is a combat map where I try to make fun shooting possible that is statisfying and an interactive map where you will test the core gameplay that does not involve running and gunning (NPC's, Quests, Stores). I also have a solid idea for a health system and no idea how to get it working! Fun times

-Wolf

"When I contradict myself, I am telling the truth"
"absurdity has become necessity"

I'd like to start this update with a big shout out to a lot of present and former community members. All the artists who's work I use in this project, without you I couldn't do much of a game in any reasonable time span and you all add to the look of this title.
Its tedious and takes patience to convert my model library for guru but I can finally say that I have a solid foundation. I have such a great library of content from you guys that I accumulated over the years, its just amazing!

I'll have a lot on my plate the upcoming two months so I won't have as much time to put in this project as I had the last couple of weeks. In that time I did however manage to get stuff done for this. Not as much as I wanted but its noteworthy. The list:

- a new NPC rig. EAI's Task Force characters are very well rigged so I don't have much trouble modifying them and adding new accessories. - plenty of converted and retextured media
- breakable glass
- a bit of early mapping

On a semi related note, I made this drawing. Its cyberpunkish as well and I'll likely use it as a graffiti somewhere in the game

I'm pretty sure about where I want to take this game visually and its starting to look alright!! I have faith that one of these days that big bad update will hit that lets me light these levels.

I'm still experimenting on how guru will handle this but it looks like I'll be able to have reasonably large levels that connect in and outdoor areas. In the level I present you now you have to question folk at a market, to gain access to an apartment where you are then again looking for a way into an illegal hacktivist outpost. (here this level will end) Its paramount that my indoor scenes will at least have as much detail as they had in FPSC and so far...it seems to work just fine Big compliment to the developers for getting us this far!

A look at a middle class living area

NPC holding McGuffin (as entitie) (scene from a test map that will not make it in the game) I'd wish for a way attach dynamic lights like this to moving characters in the future She is wearing a chest plate that didn't work out as well as I hoped

-----

All feedback welcome

-Wolf

"When I contradict myself, I am telling the truth"
"absurdity has become necessity"

A friend of mine always say: "Everything in front of "but" is unnessesary stuff to sound polite"
Why I say this:
I love your work, but...
your screenshots make me sad and happy at the same time. I do not like the color brown in this way you use it. And as contrast the green color. I am not sure if I want to go into this world and explore it.
Also this clear bright poster in the middle of a dirty world feels weird. Maybe this is art and I can´t understand it in a way, you interpret it.

Of course your texturing work is outstanding and your models looks great, but deep in my mind I can not say "wow".

Sorry

Oh and one thing make me smile(yeah I am a little kid, but is not every man a little kid deep inside)

My dream is to develope games, which makes fun when I create it and fun when other people play it.